Welcome to another exciting journey down the rabbit hole of madness. In this edition we join our intrepid hero in the middle of the journey because who cares that the little kid becomes Darth Vader. What this volume is not is a rehash of the Madman series. Same author, true but now we are looking at what really made me … me from my point of view anyway. The Johari Window of course would add in the things other see and perhaps if a proper muse can be found then that can be tackled at the end.
Welcome to another exciting journey down the rabbit hole of madness. In this edition we join our intrepid hero in the middle of the journey because who cares that the little kid becomes Darth Vader. What this volume is not is a rehash of the Madman series. Same author, true but now we are looking at what really made me … me from my point of view anyway. The Johari Window of course would add in the things other see and perhaps if a proper muse can be found then that can be tackled at the end.
FOREWORD
Sex, Alcohol and this Poet’s Soul
Welcome to another exciting journey down the rabbit hole of madness. In this edition we join our intrepid hero in the middle of the journey because who cares that the little kid becomes Darth Vader. What this volume is not is a rehash of the Madman series. Same author, true but now we are looking at what really made me … me from my point of view anyway. The Johari Window of course would add in the things other see and perhaps if a proper muse can be found then that can be tackled at the end.
It is funny that a muse is something that would allow me to expand this edition. My muses have horrible track records of assisting me down the spiral of sex and alcohol until I wake up in someone’s out building with a …. (Let us save that thought for later). Muses however do have their uses companionship, a partner in crime, someone to love and chase, or someone to hate and flee. The healing powers of my prior muses are legendary, although as much as I love my muse, I have never actually married one. I normally marry the safe bet.
Nevertheless, I digress; the particular power in this volume is, I hope, the impact on two of my favorite spiral activities on my soul. I am a sex addict. I am a whore. A sex-addicted whore is great for business. I am an alcoholic. In the beginning outside of journaling every day, I believed I needed to be self-destructive. Like Hemingway, Poe, Fitzgerald, Plath, Chekov to name some of my favorites. So for the longest time I just assumed spirals, like drunken black outs, were a part of the territory. After I went to rehab… yes, yes, yes I realized that no those things are not normal but neither is attacking upslope against an entrenched enemy but one does what one must.
Lastly, in reference to the Darth Vader remark, if I opened this book about alcohol and sex earlier than the legal drinking age, some would think that I did a lot of underage drinking or that I knew many easy women when I was younger. Whilst both or none could be true, the point is that I am not going down for what may have occurred in the dark ages. I did not burn Rome, London, or Chicago down I merely painted them red. If I opened the book up in high school, why would you care, the train wreck does not occur until later anyway. There is only one suicide attempt and an intervention. Those early years were full of teenage angst and rose colored forays into the real world.
I hope that you enjoy this book Dear Reader. I hope that perhaps you can find a bit of yourself. It remains my continuing mission to humanize the other, using poetry. Believe it or not, every person has felt or will feel this way, it is how you deal with the feelings that is important. I was trying to kill myself, what was or is your excuse?
In order to truly be free one must … must… MUST be true to thine own self and accept who you are. I am a poet, a priest, a lover, a thief, an itinerant illiterate vagabond.
Your most observant servant,
the Poet Williams
AFTER THE MOUNTAIN HAD FALLEN
After the mountain had fallen
and I was kicking rocks and cans down the road.
I stopped transfixed, as a picture played in my mind, like an old VHS tape on rewind.
Pause then play, wavy scratchy lines bring the motion forward.
Fingertip to fingertip
Touch to touch
Lip to Lip
Tongue to nip
Sensations delight not a glimmer of fright.
The need to feed to take, to rape and plunder
escapes as a moan from your lips.
Nerves excited from nape down the spine
titillating zones.
Wet tongues dash and dance, flitting and flirting
Tender caresses down sides
Past hips
Under rumps
Gyroerotic motions during the dry humps.
Hands and legs intertwined.
(The heat in the room was too high and sweat began to bead)
Moans became cries for entry, clothes sticking to private parts.
no need for lube(not to sound crude)
As all things slide, no dry humping
Just a steady thumping of headboards, footboards, and creaky bed springs.
Scene two:
Still you and I laying exhausted, happy, glowing
Time stretching far beyond all human understanding.
I roll over and say in my own gentle way
"My love for you knows no time, no space, no place.
When the sun has scattered us to bits, my last atoms will find and love you."
The tape ends....
Cutting back to reality, the here, the now
The mountain had fallen on the place that we dwelled.
I had seen my love crushed beneath a million tons of rocks.
I stood transfixed playing pictures in my mind.
Sex, Alcohol and this Poet’s Soul is a brash collection by “the poet Williams.” If you are not familiar with the author, when reading the Forward of this collection, the author seems like a character, a caricature of a sex-addict persona straight from Chuck Palahniuk’s “Choke.” The Forward’s tone is unapologetic, and may contain subjects that can be triggering, such as suicide, rape, and drug abuse:
It remains my continuing mission to humanize the other, using poetry. Believe it or not, every person has felt or will feel this way, it is how you deal with the feelings that is important. I was trying to kill myself, what was or is your excuse?
Also from the Forward of Sex, Alcohol and this Poet’s Soul, the author mentions their other work: “What this volume is not is a rehash of the Madman series.” Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t read the series mentioned. It makes it seem like the audience of this collection is for those who are familiar with the author.
If you can get past the tone and themes of the Forward itself, the poetry that proceeds feels like I am reading Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights again and again, where the speaker is constantly lamenting their lost love in the most archaic of ways:
my sweet
my love
my joy
my accuser
my abuser
my tormentor!!! (“And This”).
The title and Forward give the impression the content will be heavily sexual, hell, two of the poems are called “Sex Orgasm Ecstacy”. However, the majority of the topics reek of a lovesick teenager, the speaker is obsessed with ruminating over a woman dramatically. As an example, the poem “A Single Kiss” begins: “Can a single kiss steal one’s soul? / Can a single touch burn itself into one’s skin?” which still feels very Bronte.
Yet the finesse of a Bronte is lacking in the language of Sex, Alcohol and this Poet’s Soul. The diction used is low, the word “nipple” appears multiple times, and in a forced manner where it seems like the author is really trying to find words that rhyme with nipple, along with a list of random phrases: “The dance begins anew… / A tipple / A tossle / A nipple / A dipple...” (“A Meeting in Space and Time”). My Grammarly extension does not even recognize the word “dipple” and marks it as an unknown word. As shown in this poem as well, the rhyme schemes are generally rudimentary. Crass language like “shitty” and “fuck” appears throughout.
Most of the poems reflect the title of the collection. However, there is one poem that does not belong and honestly made me feel uncomfortable due to its total irrelevance in relation to the other topics of being a drug and sex-addicted predator. Stuffed between a poem titled “A Love Poem” and another poem called “Alcoholic” is a piece about the speaker’s dead child, “In Memory of Jonathon Larue”, which ends “Still I wonder / Why oh why / did my son / die?”
As described, there is a lot of sad-lover poems in this collection. The Afterward does note “Dear Reader, I promise more sex and alcohol in the next volume. This is a trilogy and we have only started our journey down the path.”
Pass. I will not be taking that "journey" through two other collections. This first was a journey of me side-eyeing enough.